Shirish Ranjit
Microsoft released their much anticipated operation system software Vista. After years of delay, Microsoft has shipped Vista to its business customers and soon to be released to its consumers. Vista suppose to be Microsoft’s most advanced operating system, or is it that advanced? Lets take a look at some reviews.
Mike Elgan in his blog at (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=655&blogid=4) made six major points on Vista. They are:
- Vista is incomplete
- Vista is expensive
- Vista wants a new PC
- Vista is time-consuming
- Windows XP isn’t obsolete
- Vista may be the best reason yet to buy a Mac
First point, we can infer from Microsoft’s history of releasing software that Vista is not stable as XP. Though it has taken many years to build Vista, as Mike mentioned not many hardware and also software are ready for the prime time yet.
Second point is that Vista is priced very high in the era of free and open source software. It is so high that you can buy Mac Mini for that price.
Besides price point, third point is that Vista requires a new computer. It will not run on your old computer if you want to take all the features that Vista provides. This makes you think, is Microsoft tacitly supporting Linux (free and open source) operating system? Linux is going to work on all old hardware. Linux had been have been building device drivers for years to support many different hardware vendors.
The forth point is that Vista is time-consuming to install and upgrade. Users require learning new operation system. If thats so, Linux looking much cheaper solution.
I have been using Windows 2000 and XP. I think they have developed to the point both operating systems are stable. I have spent numerous hours working with those two system to work for me. I am not sure I need a new software that I need to spend a lot of time to be productive. So, why should I upgrade when XP is working well.
The sixth point sums up the first five. If it is so expensive to upgrade and use, why not just get Mac when they have the OS that Microsoft has just released for number of years. There are many reviews that just points that Vista is almost clone to Mac OS X operating system.
Following are some interesting publications on Vista.
Kin Mingis installs vista on his mac and writes about his experience. His experience is that Vista is very similar to Mac OS X. His point is that Mac OS X has been around for a number of years, thus this is not a break through in interface design.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/09/27/vistavsmac/index.php?lsrc=mwrss
This blog compares Mac OS X with Windows Vista with screen shots. The screen shots looks really similar. Where is the imagination of Microsoft genius’.
http://lifehacker.com/software/top/windows-vista-beta-a-lot-like-mac-os-x-179909.php
This is a review on Vista. “Has any OS been so maligned and so praised during a painfully long development cycle as Windows Vista? The march to Vista’s launch has sometimes seemed longer than the Hundred Years War.â€
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8149
A brief introduction on Vista.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128404-c,vistalonghorn/article.html
A detail article on Vista in New York Times. You need to have subscription to read it though.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00713F93D550C748CDDAB0994DE404482
Some hardware vendors giving away coups for Vista, check the following site
http://cnet.nytimes.com/4532-10921_7-0.html?keywords=Laptops
Tim Allix’s title of his article “Solution: Go buy a Macâ€
Google News on Vista